. . . .
I now found my way to the Piazza Navona. It is to me the most
interesting piazza in Rome; a large oblong space, surrounded with tall,
shabby houses, among which there are none that seem to be palaces. The
sun falls broadly over the area of the piazza, and shows the fountains in
it;--one a large basin with great sea-monsters, probably of Bernini's
inventions, squirting very small streams of water into it; another of the
fountains I do not at all remember; but the central one is an immense
basin, over which is reared an old Egyptian obelisk, elevated on a rock,
which is cleft into four arches. Monstrous devices in marble, I know not
of what purport, are clambering about the cloven rock or burrowing
beneath it; one and all of them are superfluous and impertinent, the only
essential thing being the abundant supply of water in the fountain. This
whole Piazza Navona is usually the scene of more business than seems to
be transacted anywhere else in Rome; in some parts of it rusty iron is
offered for sale, locks and keys, old tools, and all such rubbish; in
other parts vegetables, comprising, at this season, green peas, onions,
cauliflowers, radishes, artichokes, and others with which I have never
made acquaintance; also, stalls or wheelbarrows containing apples,
chestnuts (the meats dried and taken out of the shells), green almonds in
their husks, and squash-seeds,--salted and dried in an oven,--apparently
a favorite delicacy of the Romans.
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